Sunday, June 8, 2014

It's a nice day out, my Sunday, so I go off to my brother's house to take his Lab for a nice walk up to the park, throw a little ball, pick up a nice poop, and then spend the afternoon visiting and dinner. My niece and I decide to draw up a list for a vacation. I write things on a piece of paper with a crayon, first on the list, 'bathing suit,' which I saw carefully and slowly, 'because we're going to bath in the sea.' The list grows, interest wanes slightly, and my niece suggest we go find some tape, because, of course, we need to tape our list shut, now that we've drawn a scribbled beach sunhat on the back side in green. So, she leads, and we walk down to the kitchen and find some tape in 'the junk drawer.' And four, five, six, seven pieces of tape later, most applied diagonally, not counting the throw away sections of tape, my niece seems satisfied.

Later on my bro explains to me that 'remember, you're the uncle (the adult) and she's the niece, and if you're not careful, temper her plans with some adjustment, she's going to take control with her suggestions.' Which I gather might explain my general psychology and reason to see a shrink. Yes, indeed, growing up the baby around some Irish domineering types, I can see that.

I am too easy going, in a world in which people management and some craftiness is required, largely so everyone doesn't turn out looking like an ass. I've been an agreeable yes man, I've taken things young women say at face value, gone on my bumbling way at other times, and this tolerance or arrogant shy laziness to face other people, individual wills, is probably why I am where I am, a barkeep going on a large decade without a lot to show for it. Yup. You have to impose your will sometimes, not just be meek and turn the other cheek.

But there is the influence of my gentle father, Theosophist, Buddhist, professor of plant biology, who was gentle, kind, but stern when he needed to be. Having seen his immigrant mother die of tuberculosis at home as a boy, learning that 'life can be pretty grim' (as he once confided me when I was young, when we drove into town to get the New York Times on a sunday), he had a certain distance from emotions, a tolerance for other's emotional outburst that came from deep within, which I suppose, temperamentally I was more drawn too, though of course I have my sins.

An interesting combination.

I read about Voidness and Nirvana, which can only be represented by admitting we have no terms for any of it, not even one. All we have is the spiritual insight of clear mind of the Universe we are. Maybe that's why people enjoy me as a barkeep. I am that absence of terms, that lack of show, that amorphous kind person who is still semi-intelligent enough to crack a joke.

About Me

Gandhi tells us to be the change we want to see in the world. I wanted to see a blog on writing. Not necessarily the craft stuff, the things you could learn in a classroom, but the basic matters (and mysteries) of creativity, depth and subject matter.
I am a veteran barman of Washington, DC. My novel, A Hero For Our Time, a modern retelling of Hamlet, is available on Amazon.com. (My thanks to Mr. Lermontov, God rest his soul, for allowing me to nod to his singular classic.)
What makes writing literature? Writing will always be an art form to honor.